Newt Phaeton and the Goblin Wand
by Splack
Summary: Newt Phaeton, a young American wizard, moves to London so he can attend Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but quickly discovers that he is slightly different from other wizards.  Newt's first year coincides with Harry's third.  Please Review.
1. Ollivanders

**Ollivanders**

A small boy, only days older than eleven, stood in front of the old and dusty counter in a narrow and shabby shop in Diagon Alley, shifting his weight from foot to foot with his hands pushed into his pants pockets. The boy was thin and stringy; he was short for his age. His coarse black hair stood up on his head in uncontrollable lumps and spikes. It was stuffy in the shop, and he was sweating. He wore an uncomfortable tan suit, which his mother had bought at a muggle shop only a few days ago. The sign above the door of the shop in which he stood read _Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands Since 382 BC._ The gold letters on the sign were faded and peeling.

The boy had been in the shop for several hours. About two hours after their arrival at the shop, his mother, realizing that it could be many more hours until their business there was concluded, had left him alone in the wand shop so she could buy the rest of the goods they needed. She had handed him a pocket full of coins, kissed him lightly on the forehead, and walked out into the busy alley, which was bustling with hurrying wizards and witches. That had been about an hour ago, and the shop owner, Mr. Ollivander, had continued trying to sell him a wand.

Mr. Ollivander had measured the boy's arms, his legs, his instep, the length between his shoulders, and every other conceivable measurement; then he had begun to hand the boy various wands. Each time he did so, the boy had given the wand a hopeful swish, and nothing had happened. After about the thirtieth time this had happened, the shop owner had muttered under his breath that he had never before had such trouble selling a wand. Five or six other families had come into the shop to buy wands during that time, and Mr. Ollivander had supplied them with their wands almost immediately. The boy was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with him.

Mr. Ollivander came out from behind a ceiling-high stack of wand boxes carrying yet another wand for him to try. He was old and stooped with large, pale eyes and wild, white hair. He must have seen the look on the boy's face because he stopped and said, "Don't look so downtrodden, Mr. Phaeton. It's the wand that chooses the wizard, not the wizard who chooses the wand. Somewhere here is a wand that will claim you. Now, try this one. Nine and a half inches. Mahogany with dragon heart string."

The comment didn't seem to cheer the boy up much, but he removed his right hand from his pants pocket anyway and reached out for the wand Mr. Ollivander was offering him. He gave it a small flick and nothing happened. Frowning, the shop owner took the wand back and disappeared behind another ceiling-high stack of boxes. He returned moments later with another wand. "Try this one," he said. "Ten inches. Ash with a phoenix tail feather."

Young Mr. Phaeton swished the wand dutifully, but nothing happened. He returned the wand to Mr. Ollivander, who again disappeared behind a stack of boxes. The boy wiped sweat from his forehead with the palm of his left hand and then jammed it back into his pants pocket. He was beginning to wonder if he was even supposed to be here. Then he remembered his mother's excitement, shortly after he and she had moved to London, when she had taken a small brown envelope from the grasp of a large barn owl that had landed on their window box. She had cried with joy when she had opened it and seen the letterhead of Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Remembering this, young Mr. Phaeton resolved to wave wands all day if he had to, until he found the one that would belong to him.

_**Disclaimer: I own Newt Phaeton and his immediate family. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


	2. Squibs and Mudbloods

**Squibs and Mudbloods**

As he waited for Mr. Ollivander to return with another wand, the boy, having nothing better to do while standing there and waiting, closed his eyes and remembered the day he had learned that he was a wizard.

_He was at school, in Boston, before he and his mother had moved to England. Two 6__th__ grade bullies, the two that harassed him every day it seemed, had knocked him down and taken his lunch money during recess. Helpless, he watched from the ground, tears forming in his eyes, as the two older boys divided his lunch money between themselves. He was distracted from his self-pity, though, when one of the boys yelled at him, "Hey freak. Tell your weirdo mama to give you more allowance next week. Six bucks is hardly worth beating you up for."_

_The boy loved his mother very much. At hearing her being called a weirdo, all the feelings of despair and self-loathing that had been building up in young Mr. Phaeton's mind turned immediately to rage. His tears dried up and his face turned red. He felt his anger fill him up like boiling-hot water. Suddenly, the three dollars in the bully's hand burst into flames. The bully screamed and dropped the money; ashes floated eerily toward the ground. Then the boy on the ground realized that other people were screaming; everyone seemed to be screaming, in fact. He looked around and saw, much to his horror, that the entire playground was on fire. The swing seats, the seesaws, and the wooden fence that surrounded the yard were burning, crimson flames licking the afternoon sky. Flames were even crawling over the side of the school building. Young Mr. Phaeton did not know how it had happened, but he knew that he had caused the fire. He did not understand it, but he knew it had been his fault._

_He couldn't remember much of what happened after that. He knew that the fire department came to put out the fire. He knew that classes were cancelled for the rest of the day. He knew that his mother picked him up early and brought him home. Strangely, his mother seemed to know that he had caused the fire. Even more strangely, she did not seem to be upset about it; in fact, she seemed pleased. She positively beamed at him._

_That night, he was unable to sleep. The image of the bully's screaming face, contorted with pain and horror, would not leave his mind. After what seemed like hours of lying awake in the darkness, the boy began to hear voices coming from the other end of the house. He crept out of his bedroom and towards the living room, where he could see an unusual light and where the voices seemed to be coming from. As he moved closer, he noticed that the house was becoming warmer and warmer. He also realized that one of the voices he heard was his mother's. He crept to the archway that separated the living room from the hallway and poked his head around the corner of it. A stifling blast of hot air immediately hit him in the face. He saw, after his eyes had adjusted to the light, his mother kneeling on the floor in front of the large fireplace. Bright green flames were burning high in the grate; they were licking outward just inches away from his mother's face, but she seemed undisturbed. Then the boy saw a disembodied head in the midst of the fireplace, wreathed in the strange green flames. His eyes widened and he pulled his head back into the hall, wondering at what he had just seen. After a few moments of indecision, the boy looked again. His mother was still there. The head was still there. The two of them appeared to be talking to each other._

"_It's true. He's a wizard. He nearly burned down half of his school today," his mother said, pleadingly, to the face in the fireplace. "I told you sometimes it skips a generation."_

"_I'm very proud of him," replied the voice, not sounding at all like it meant it. The face in the fireplace, from which that voice has issued, was that of a withered old woman with fierce features and hateful black eyes. "What, exactly, would you like me to do about it?"_

"_He's your grandson," the boy's mother cried, indignantly. "I thought… I thought…"_

"_He's no grandson of mine," replied the harsh face in the fireplace. "He's the son of a squib," she said, hatefully. The boy's mother's face dropped when she heard these words. "His father was a muggle too, no doubt."_

"_His father was a good man. Better than any wizard I ever met," she replied. After a moment, she went on. "I was hoping you could help us move to England." The face in the fireplace raised a wrinkled eyebrow. "You always told me that Hogwart's was the best school for witches and wizards in the world. I want him to go there."_

"_That's simply out of the question," the face in the fireplace snarled. "I can't be seen associating with squibs and mudbloods. If you want to come to England, do it on your own. You certainly didn't hesitate about running away to America."_

"_You didn't leave me any choice," the boy's mother replied, angrily. "You were probably glad to be rid of me. You never hesitated to tell me how you didn't need a useless squib laying about your house."_

"_True," the boy's grandmother said; she smiled when she saw how the words had hurt his mother. There was a long silence while the two of them looked at each other. The boy's mother's eyes were full of tears. His grandmother's eyes were full of loathing and hatred._

"_You could put in a good word for him with the Board of Governors. I know you have contacts there. That awful Malfoy man."_

"_Out of the question," snarled the wrinkled face in the fireplace._

_The boy's mother straightened her shoulders and looked into her mother's hateful eyes. "Then I guess I can let them know that your daughter is a squib," she said. "I'm sure that Mr. Malfoy would find that interesting." The old woman stared at her in fury. "I know you didn't tell anyone why I ran away. I'm sure you told them all I'd met a nice American wizard and settled down somewhere." Again, only silence and heat came from the fireplace. "I wonder if the Daily Prophet would like to hear about this. I'm sure it would make a great story…"_

"_Alright," snarled the voice within the fire, dripping venom. "I'll do it. Just keep your squib mouth shut about it."_

"_Good," replied the boy's mother, looking happier and more in control of her emotions. "You can tell them I married a nice wizard in America and I'm moving back to London so that our son can attend Hogwart's." The face in the fire nodded, still oozing hatred._

_The boy withdrew his head from the living room archway and quietly walked away from the blazing-hot living room. He found his bed and lay down in it, thinking about what he had just seen and heard. None of it seemed possible; none of it seemed real. He closed his eyes, but the images flying through his tired mind, images of a craggy and hate-filled face wreathed in flame, kept him from sleeping._

"Here. Try this one," young Mr. Phaeton heard a voice say. It startled him out of his memories. "Nine inches. Holly and unicorn hair," Mr. Ollivander said. The boy took the wand and flicked it. Nothing happened. Mr. Ollivander took the wand back, tugged thoughtfully at his grizzled white hair, then disappeared behind another stack of wand boxes.

_**Disclaimer: I own Newt Phaeton and his immediate family. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


	3. The Goblin Wand

**The Goblin Wand**

After young Mr. Phaeton had tried several more wands without success, Mr. Ollivander disappeared into the back of the shop. He was back there a long time, and the boy was starting to wonder if the shop owner had given up on him. Then the boy heard the sound of creaky hinges opening somewhere in the back of the shop, and moments later he could hear the shop owner's footsteps heading back towards the counter. When Mr. Ollivander came into view, he was holding a silver metal box, taller and much larger than the boxes that were stacked throughout the store. He laid the box on the counter, opened it, and smiled at the boy. "Now try this one, Mr. Phaeton. But be careful," he added.

Inside the box was a small, silver metal stand. Displayed on the stand was a wand like the boy had never seen before. It was short (seven and a half inches, Mr. Ollivander would later confirm), thick, and covered with small metallic scales (like the scales of a snake). When the boy turned his head one way, the metallic scales looked bright silver; when he turned his head another way, the scales looked crimson red. The boy slowly reached a hand towards the wand. "Careful," the man behind the counter hissed.

The boy placed his hand on the wand. Mr. Ollivander flinched. The boy slowly lifted the wand from its metal box and held it up to his eyes. Mr. Ollivander looked surprised and exhilarated. "Does it hurt?" he asked. The boy shook his head, surprised by the question. "You mean it's not burning you?" she shop owner asked. Again, the boy shook his head.

"It's not even hot," he told the shop owner.

The shop owner broke out in a large smile. "That's a very special wand," he told the boy. "In fact, you're the first person I've shown it to in many years. Those are salamander scales it's covered with." At the boy's blank look, the shop owner elaborated. "Salamanders are elemental creatures. They are made of living fire. Their scales will burn anyone who touches them. That's why I don't use salamanders in my own wands."

The boy looked up from the wand. "You didn't make this one?" he asked.

"No, not at all," Mr. Ollivander replied. "I told you. That wand is special. It's a goblin wand. Jackalhand the Crafty made it for Anklebiter the Terrible almost a thousand years ago, during the war between goblins and wizards. Anklebiter was a general in the goblin army. A very nasty little creature by all accounts. Some people say that all the trouble they caused during the war—they never did fight fair, you know—is the reason why goblins are no longer allowed to have wands."

The boy looked back at the unusual wand, amazed by its history. "But why isn't it burning me?" he asked.

Mr. Ollivander smiled again. "Because you are the wand's chosen wielder. It is said that the wand will burn anyone who is not worthy to use it. I think the fact that you've held it this long without getting hurt is proof that it should be yours." The boy smiled.

"Go ahead. Give it a flick," Mr. Ollivander encouraged, but when the boy raised it over his head, Mr. Ollivander suddenly screeched, "No! Don't point it at me! Aim it over there somewhere!" He indicated the front of the shop with a wave of his hand.

The boy turned around and flicked the wand tip towards the door of the shop. Immediately, the door, the wood floor beneath it, and the drapes around the storefront window burst into flames. Mr. Ollivander inhaled sharply through clenched teeth, rushed around the boy, pulled his own wand out of his waistcoat pocket, and waved it towards the front of the shop. The flames died almost at once.

"Well," Mr. Ollivander said, slightly out of breath. "I think that settles it. The wand is yours." He paused for a moment, breathing heavily. "But I have to tell you," he said, "that it is an elemental wand. I have no idea what the core is made of, but I suspect it's probably salamander as well. Perhaps the tongue." The boy didn't seem to understand. "Since it's an elemental wand," the shop owner continued, "it will make spells of its element easier to cast. In this case, fire spells. So be careful. Also," he went on, "it will make other spells harder to cast." He paused for a moment. "But," he said, "out of all the wands here, I think it's the one that fits you best. Wait right here for a moment, please."

The boy did not respond (he was too busy watching the wand change colors as he turned it in his hands), so the shop owner left him there and returned to the back of the shop, to the safe where the metal box had been. He returned a short time later, carrying a thick roll of leather. He handed it to the boy. The boy looked at him, dumbfounded. "Go ahead," he said. "Open it."

The boy spread the leather roll out on the counter and let it unwind. Inside was a shirt of bright salamander scales, gleaming silver and red as the boy moved his head to look at it. The boy picked it up to examine it. The front of the shirt was covered with salamander scales, as was the rigid collar and hard shoulder guards that were attached to it. The back of the shirt was plain black leather.

As the boy stared, the shop owner spoke. "It was General Anklebiter's armor. It comes with the wand. You might grow into it in a year or two." The boy reverently sat the shirt back on its leather wrappings. He began to rub his fingers up and down its scale-studded front. "But be careful with it," Mr. Ollivander warned. "It's made of salamander scales too, so it will burn anyone besides you that touches it." The boy continued to stroke it tenderly.

After a while, Mr. Ollivander asked, "how much money did your mother leave you?"

The boy, still mesmerized by his new treasures, dug absently in his pocket and pulled out fifteen golden coins. The shop owner seemed slightly crestfallen when he saw the amount proffered; apparently, he had hoped to get more for such treasure.

The boy looked up at him, apprehensively. "Is it enough, sir?"

Seeing the pleading expression on the boy's face, the shop owner said, "that will do," and took his coins. He patted the boy on the head. "That will do."

Young Mr. Phaeton replaced the wand in its metal box, rolled his new shirt of salamander scales back into its leather wrapping, and tucked each under an arm. He thanked Mr. Ollivander for his assistance, then hurried out of the shop and into the bustling alley to find his mother.

_**Disclaimer: I own Newt Phaeton and his immediate family. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


	4. Hogwart's Express

**Hogwart's Express**

Ms. Phaeton pulled her son by the hand through busy King's Cross Station. "Hurry up, Honey, or we'll miss the train," she cried above the crowd as he pulled him along, heading straight for the divider between platforms 9 and 10.

The boy's eyes widened as they walked through what seemed to be a solid brick surface. The wall, however, drifted away like smoke in front of him; he and his mother were now standing in a crowded platform in front of a steaming, scarlet locomotive. All around them, men and women were helping their children onto the train and wishing them farewell and good luck.

"Hurry up," his mother urged again. She helped him drag his cauldron and his trunk, which included his new wand and scale shirt along with his books and other supplies, into the train. She pecked him on the cheek and told him, lovingly, to have a good first year at Hogwart's.

Moments after young Mr. Phaeton had climbed aboard, steam belched from the locomotive and it began to move slowly out of the station. The boy waved to his mother through the train's door until she disappeared into the distance. When he could see her no more, he moved slowly up the aisle, dragging his trunk and his cauldron behind him, searching for a compartment with sitting room.

The first several compartments he passed were full, the students within them talking animatedly and laughing amongst themselves. The sixth compartment on his left, however, was half empty. Two girls (each silent, absorbed in what they were doing) sat across from each other, not paying any attention to each other.

"May I sit here?" the boy asked the compartment in general. He did not get a reply. Seeing nothing else to do, he stowed his trunk and cauldron in an overhead compartment and took a seat next to one of the girls.

He couldn't see the face of the girl sitting across from him because it was buried behind a magazine of some sort. The girl sitting next to him was thin and tall. Her straight black hair fell over her shoulders and down her back. She was concentrating intently on a small gray box in her hands, punching buttons on the front of it furiously with her thumbs.

"Is that a Game Boy?" he asked the girl next to him.

"Yes," she replied, impatiently, without looking up at him.

"Cool," said the boy. "I asked for one for my birthday, but my mother said we couldn't afford it."

"Uh-huh," said the girl, noncommittally, without pausing her game.

The boy was silent for a while. "What are you playing?" he asked after a while. The girl didn't answer. "Have you played that new Metroid game?" he asked her. "The commercials for that one looked really cool."

At last the girl paused her game and looked up at him. She looked at his clothing; he was wearing the same suit he had worn to Diagon Alley; it was the only suit he owned. "You're parents are muggles aren't they?" she asked.

"Not really," the boy said, remembering his mother's instructions not to tell anyone that she was a squib and his father had been a muggle. "But I went to muggle school for a while," he explained.

The girl looked at him again and nodded. "My parents are muggles," she said. "Took them a while after they got the letter from Hogwart's to realize that it was a good thing. They thought someone was making fun of me or something. But when they saw Diagon Alley, I think it dawned on them how special it is to be a witch."

The boy was silent for a while, trying to take all of that in. "Do people make fun of you a lot?"

The girl glared at him. Then, realizing that he hadn't meant any offense, she answered him. "They used to at school. But I don't have to go back there any more."

"I got picked on a lot at school, too," said the boy.

The girl turned off her Game Boy and laid it on the seat next to her. She turned to look at the boy. "I'm Serra," she said. "Serra Athena."

"My name's Newt Phaeton," said the boy. "Nice to meet you. Is she your friend?"

They both looked at the girl sitting across from them. She said nothing. "We haven't talked much," Serra said, "but her name's Luna."

Newt took a closer look at the magazine the girl was reading, but he couldn't make out any of the words. Then he realized that she was holding it upside down. He craned his neck, trying to read it. "The Quiggley?"

"The Quibbler," said the girl behind the magazine in a dreamy voice. "It's my father's paper." She dropped the magazine and looked over it at the two of them. "Do either of you know about rumple-horned snorkacks?" Without invitation, she began to tell them all about the majestic snorkack.

After a while of listening to Luna's describe strange and unheard of creatures (not understanding anything of what she was saying), and after realizing that she probably wouldn't stop any time soon, Serra elbowed Newt and whispered, "you can play my game if you want. I got to level six. You can start from there." Newt nodded enthusiastically; Serra handed him the Game Boy.

_**Disclaimer: I own Serra Athena, Newt Phaeton, and Newt's family. Game Boy and Metroid are owned by Nintendo. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


	5. White Fire

**White Fire**

The compartment in which Newt Phaeton rode, speeding towards Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was comfortably silent. Newt had reached level 8 on Serra's video game. Serra had taken a portable cassette player out of her trunk and was listening to it through its headphones. She was absent-mindedly flipping through the first few chapters of one of her new schoolbooks. Luna, sitting across from them, had finished telling them everything she knew about rumple-horned snorkacks and other strange creatures, and had buried her face back in the pages of The Quibbler. For some reason Newt could not understand, she was reading it right side up now.

Newt was struck by a sudden thought; he paused the game and nudged Serra with his elbow. She looked at him enquiringly and pulled the headphones away from her ears. "How many batteries do you have for these things?" Newt asked her. "I don't think we'll be able to get any more once we're at Hogwart's," he added.

"I've got several packs in my trunk," Serra replied. "But I was hoping I could find a spell that could recharge them. I know of a couple I'd like to try, but I haven't been able to pull them off yet." She paused for a minute, thinking. "I also hope I can find a way to generate electricity using magic," she said. "I've got a small television set and a VCR in my trunk too, and I won't be able to use them without electricity."

"Wow," Newt responded. "You must be a… A… What's that word for electronics geeks?" He realized, moments after he had said it, that calling his new friend a geek probably wasn't a good idea. His face turned suddenly scarlet.

"Technophile," Serra said. "I guess I am."

"Yeah. Technophile," Newt stammered. He paused and blushed even harder. "I'm sorry I called you a geek just then," he said.

The girl waved her hand dismissively. "I hadn't even noticed," she said. "Besides, I've been called worse."

Newt was thinking about this bizarre statement when the train suddenly screeched to a halt. Newt was thrown across the compartment and into the seat next to Luna. Serra only managed not to be flung into Luna's lap by holding onto the luggage rack above her seat. Luna, pushed back in her seat by the force of the sudden stop, looked up from her reading. "What's happening?" she said. "Are we there already?"

Newt looked out of the compartment window, trying to catch a glimpse of castle spires against the darkening sky or the twinkle of lights from high windows. The sky was obscured by dark clouds. Thick belts of rain fell from the building thunderheads and pummeled the window like angry fists; streams of water ran thickly down the glass, obscuring his view.

Then the train gave another great lurch and stopped. The entire compartment seemed to shake. The lights flickered and then went out. Serra shrieked involuntarily.

"What's going on?" Luna repeated; this time her voice sounded a little less dreamy and a little more frightened.

A black figure floated past the semi-opaque glass of the compartment door. Then another, and another. Another of the dark figures appeared beyond the door and lingered there. A moment later, the door opened itself at the figure's command. A deep black cloak and hood concealed the figure's form except for it scabby, skeletal hands and the tip of its grey chin. Newt could not tell if it had any legs; it seemed to float several inches above the compartment's floor.

All the warmth seemed to be sucked from the room when it entered. It raised its head toward the children, revealing a rotten-looking, toothless mouth just underneath the hem of its hood. All three of the children backed away from the figure. The two girls screamed in earnest. Newt felt like all the happiness was being drained out of him. Images of all the worst moments of his life started flashing through his memory: his classmates chanting "Nerdy Newty, Nerdy Newty"; the impact of a bully's fist against his nose; three burning dollar bills falling from the hands of a terrified 6th grader; attending his father's funeral.

Without thinking about what he was doing, he pulled his wand from his pocket and pointed it at the terrifying creature that was advancing toward him. Its dark cloak suddenly burst into flames. The creature let out a terrible, heart-piercing scream of anger and advanced on him even faster. It seemed unharmed by the flames, oblivious of them.

Newt flicked his wand and the flames changed color. Now they were the bright blue flames of dragon's fire. Still, the creature did not seem effected by them. He flicked his wand again; the flames turned green, like the flames that had wreathed his grandmother's head in the fireplace. And again; the flames changed to the bright, rich gold of wand-breaking fire.

Still the creature advanced. Its huge, lipless, toothless mouth, was only inches away from Newt's face. The creature made a wretched sucking sound and Newt's terror rose to an unbearable crescendo. He flicked his wand again, desperately. The flames on the creature's back turned to pure, radiant white. The creature screamed again; it was a hundred times worse than the thing's first scream because, this time, it was a scream of pain. The sound of it seemed to puncture Newt's heart and soul as well as his eardrums.

The creature pulled its face away from Newt's; the horrible sucking sensation stopped. The flames grew brighter and spread over the thing's body, engulfing its tattered cloak and hood. It writhed in agony and let loose another horrible, pain-filled wail. Then it rushed forward, past the three children and crashed through the compartment's glass window. It didn't seem like it was going to fit through the small opening that the shattered window provided; but with a sickening sound of cracking bones and ripping flesh, it forced itself through (by contorting itself in a sickly, inhuman manner) and into the stormy night. Newt breathlessly followed its flight through the rain with his eyes. The flames on its back seemed unaffected by the tempest. He heard another of its sickening screams, and then it disappeared from sight.

_**Disclaimer: I own Serra Athena, Newt Phaeton, and Newt's family. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


	6. Dementors

**Dementors**

After the cloaked creature had fled from their compartment, Newt, Serra, and Luna sat motionless in the darkness, afraid to say anything. A short time later, the other cloaked figures that they had seen in the hall came rushing back from where they had come, fleeing from a bright white light. A tired-looking and disheveled wizard followed after them. A few moments later, the train's lights came back on. Luna blinked her wide, bright eyes in the light. Serra jumped, startled by the change. Newt was still too terrified and too confused to move.

After a little while, the disheveled wizard poked his head into the open door of their compartment. "Is everyone alright here?" he asked. The three of them nodded dumbly. The man rushed out of their compartment to check on other students.

"We're OK because of you, Newt," Luna said in her soft, dreamy voice after the man had left the compartment. "You scared it off," she said.

"I think he did more than just scare it," Serra said. "My ears still hurt from its screams. It sounded like it was dying."

"I don't think so," replied Luna in the same tone. "Nothing can kill a dementor, not even a rumple-horned snorkack."

"A dementor?" Newt asked, finally regaining his voice. "Is that what that thing was called?" He shivered with loathing.

Luna nodded at him. There was a long, tense silence. Finally, the train began to move again. The three of them climbed back into their seats.

"That was amazing," Serra told Newt after another tension-filled silence. "How did you do that? How did you make the fire change from one type to another like that?"

"I don't know," replied Newt. "Maybe it was my wand doing it," he added as he looked down at the goblin wand, still held tightly in his right hand.

"I've never seen one like that before," Luna told them. "May I see it?"

Newt began to hand the wand over to her, then suddenly remembered Mr. Ollivander's warning and drew it back. Luna didn't look surprised or upset about it, but Serra yelled at him "What did you do that for? Are you just being rude?"

"No. No," Newt tried to explain. "It's just that it will burn anyone but me who touches it."

"That's a load of you-know-what," Serra told him. "You just don't want to share."

"No. Really. It's true," Newt stammered; but Serra obviously didn't believe him. Luna still seemed untroubled by the whole matter.

In exasperation, Newt turned away from them both and sat his wand on the seat beside him. After a second or two, he began to smell smoke.

"It was really nice of you to save us from the dementor and all that," he heard Luna say from behind him, "but would it be alright if I asked you to do something for me?"

Newt was confused. "Sure," he said. "Of course."

"Please don't set anything else on fire tonight," she requested.

Newt looked down at his wand and realized where the smoke was coming from; the seat beneath it was burning. He quickly grabbed the goblin-made wand and shoved it back into his pocket. It left a seven and a half inch burn on the surface of the seat. Serra looked at him, and he understood that now she believed him about the wand.

Moments later, the train stopped again, this time slowly and gently. Serra gasped. "We haven't put our robes on yet!"

The three of them rummaged frantically through their trunks and hurriedly pulled their school robes on over their clothes. Students had already begun filing past the door of their compartment to disembark. Newt slammed the lid of his trunk shut and followed Serra and Luna into the corridor and off of the train.

The three of them milled about with the other students for a while before they heard someone shout in a deep, gruff voice, "First years with me. First years over here."

Newt and Serra looked towards the sound a saw a gigantic man (fully twice as tall as Serra, who was extremely tall for her age) with a haggard black beard that covered almost his entire face except for his eyes. He was nervously waving his enormous hands over his head. "First years this way," he shouted again.

Newt and Serra began to make their way towards the man. They stopped, though, when they realized that Luna wasn't coming with them.

"It's my second year," she told them. "I'm riding with the thestrals."

She pointed at a row of apparently horse-less carriages that were already beginning to fill up with returning students. Serra and Newt didn't have time to ask her what thestrals were, because the enormous man began shouting again. They made their way towards him.

After all of the first year students had gathered around the huge man, they piled into small, wooden boats that were anchored near the station. Newt didn't know any of them except Serra; and he was glad he had her company. When the last of them were on board, the boats began to move of their own accord away from the dock. The thick night was disorienting; and at first, Newt had no idea where they were headed. Then the boats moved past an outcrop of rock and Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry came suddenly into view.

Newt, Serra, and half of the other assembled first years gasped simultaneously at the sight of the castle. Its many lofty towers dominated the skyline. The many pale yellow lights that shone from its countless windows were like a beacon in the darkness. It was magnificent.

As the boats moved nearer and nearer to the castle, Newt kept his eyes fixed firmly upon it. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw what seemed to be many shadowy forms drifting in and out of the darkness beyond the school grounds. They looked like nothing more than fleeting shadows, but Newt was suddenly convinced that they were dementors.

_**Disclaimer: I own Serra Athena, Newt Phaeton, and Newt's family. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


	7. Very Clever

**Very Clever**

_Ah. A difficult one_, said a jubilant voice inside Newt's head. He could see nothing, and he could hear nothing but the voice.

Moments ago, Professor McGonagall, an old but stately witch, had placed the sorting hat on his head; it had immediately slipped down over his face and eyes. Now, the world consisted only of the hat's strange monologue.

_Yes. Very difficult_, said the hat inside his mind. _I sense the capacity for great courage in you. You've got a fair mind, as well. Let's see. Also the makings of a great and true friend. And your family has a strong Slytherin heritage. Every one of the Stranges has been in Slytherin, except your mother; but she never came to school here._

It took Newt a moment to figure out what the hat was talking about; then he realized that his mother's maiden name had been Strange.

_Very difficult, indeed_, droned the hat. _But I do enjoy a challenge_.

The hat hummed to itself as it thought. It seemed to Newt like it had been doing this for hours.

_Well, well, well_, it said at last. _It doesn't look like it's going to be an easy year for you. I can tell you that you'll have to be very clever to get through your classes. Very, very clever. So… I'll put you in…_

"Ravenclaw," the hat announced to the entire room. Professor McGonagall pulled the hat from Newt's head and he heard a smattering of applause.

Serra had been sorted into Ravenclaw a few moments earlier. She sat next to Luna (who was focusing all of her attention on an interesting spot on a far wall instead of paying attention to the sorting ceremony) at the table hung with blue and silver banners. Newt smiled inwardly, happy with the results of his sorting. He crossed the hall to the Ravenclaw table and took a seat next to Serra.

**_Disclaimer: I own Serra Athena, Newt Phaeton, and Newt's family. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling._**


	8. Nerdy Newty

**Nerdy Newty**

Newt trudged slowly into the Ravenclaw common room, the books in his arms a burden on his slight frame. It was the middle of the lunch break, but he didn't feel like eating anything. He was simply too depressed to think about food. He had been at Hogwart's for almost three weeks now, and he had not been able, in all that time, to cast a single spell successfully. He wondered how long this could go on before he would simply fail all of his classes and get kicked out of the school.

His first class today had been history of magic, which he excelled at and thoroughly enjoyed. He had read the entire textbook already. Among the myriad of discoveries he had made within its pages, he had learned that Jackalhand, the goblin who had crafted his salamander-scale wand, had died while making it. Anklebiter the Terrible, it turned out, had finished the work on it and had become one of the most feared goblins of his time, using the wand to wreak havoc on the wizarding world. Anklebiter had been executed at the end of the war, and (as far as Newt could tell from his research) Newt was the first person to use the wand since then.

His second class had been charms, and he had been consistently performing poorly in that class. For two weeks now, the entire class had been trying to master a levitation spell. Everyone else in the class had performed the charm at least once, except for Newt, who (at best) could do no more than set the feather they were trying to levitate on fire.

Transfiguration, his third class and the last one before the lunch break, had been simply disastrous.

As he walked into the common room, he saw Serra sitting on one of the many stone benches which were arranged in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the circumference of the circular room. She was wearing her headphones, snacking on a slice of pumpkin bread, flipping through the pages of her own transfiguration book, and completely ignoring the breathtaking view of the grounds offered by the window in front of which she sat. Her pet cat, Flower, was sitting on the bench next to her and swatting at a lump of pumpkin bread that, apparently, Serra had given to her. It looked like Flower (who was unique because her fur was a shockingly bright shade of purple) thought the lump of bread was more fun to play with than to eat. Newt remembered Serra telling him, when he had first seen the cat, how she had accidentally turned the cat purple when she was nine years old.

Newt threw his books on the stone floor next to the bench and began to scratch Flower on the head. Serra, obviously just noticing him, pulled off her headphones and looked at him (they were almost eye to eye when she was sitting and he was standing).

"Still upset?" she asked. Newt nodded. "It'll be alright," she said. "You'll get the hang of transfiguration eventually."

"I don't think so," Newt replied in an angst-filled voice. "I think I might have killed Professor McGonagall's guinea pig.

"No you didn't," Serra said, exasperated. "Professor McGonagall put the fire out straight away and she told me that the guinea pig wasn't too badly burned. Besides, you were trying to turn it into a pair of slippers anyway, so it's really no worse off because of it. Oh, by the way. You ran out of class before Professor McGonagall announced that the first transfiguration test is going to be next week. I thought you should know."

"Great," Newt said, using all the sarcasm he could muster. "More good news."

"We've only got a week to study, so we should probably get started some time soon," Serra said, ignoring the statement.

Newt chose to ignore the fact that she, apparently, had already started without him. He continued to stroke Flower's head, looking worried.

"Don't worry," Serra told him. "It's a written exam, not a practical. I know you'll do fine."

"It's not just the test," Newt admitted. "The other students all know I can't do anything except set stuff on fire. They're starting to pick on me about it."

When he thought about being humiliated, one of the first memories that popped into his mind was the first day of flying lessons. Madam Hooch had instructed the students to mount their brooms and hover a few feet above the ground. Newt had thought it sounded easy, but it had taken him nearly ten minutes of hard concentration to get the broom to rise off the ground. Once it did so, the broomstick had wobbled so fiercely that he had lost his grip and slid off of the side. He had caught himself at the last moment, but he had been unable to right himself so he had just dangled there, upside down, grasping the broomstick with all of his might. Madam Hooch had run to his aid, but before she could reach him, his sweaty hands had slipped off of the broom and he had fallen straight to the ground. He couldn't remember anything after that until he woke up in the hospital wing. Serra later told him that he had hit his head and passed out. She had also told him that she had never been able to even get her broom off the ground, but it hadn't made him feel any better.

The other students had started picking on him a little after that, but it was getting worse.

"The kids in Boston, at my muggle school, picked on me all the time. They called me 'Nerdy Newty'. I don't want that to happen here too."

"It won't," Serra told him, reassuringly. She patted him on the shoulder. "You have to have confidence in yourself to do magic. Pretty soon you'll find your self-confidence and you'll do just fine in class. Then no one will have a reason to pick on you."

Newt tried to smile. He was thankful to have Serra as a friend, thankful that he had someone who tried to cheer him up at times like these.

"Oh. We've only got fifteen minutes before we have to be in potions class," Serra said as she glanced at her watch. "We'd better get moving."

Potions was Newt's favorite subject. During his first weeks at Hogwart's, he had quickly discovered that he was naturally gifted at making potions. It was the only class in which he performed well on both the written assignments and the practical assignments. The potions instructor, Professor Snape, had quickly noticed Newt's talent; and he often detained Newt for a few moments after class to give him encouragement and additional instruction. It was during one of these after-class discussions when the Professor had told Newt, fondly, that it was a pity he had not been sorted into Slytherin House. "In the past, members of your family have always been placed in Slytherin," he had said. "Your cousin Ophid is in Slytherin."

Serra stood up and stuffed the remainder of her pumpkin bread into her mouth; she began gathering up her books. Newt ran to his room to get his potions book while Serra went to her room to get hers. They met back in the Ravenclaw common room; Serra covered her ears once again with her headphones; the two of them walked together towards the potions class room in companionable silence.

_**Disclaimer: I own Ophid Strange, Serra Athena, Newt Phaeton, and Newt's family. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


	9. Ophid Strange

**Ophid Strange**

"Newt. Newt Phaeton."

Newt looked around when he heard his name being called in a stranger's voice.

"Are you Newt Phaeton?" asked the voice.

Newt was sitting on one of the stone benches in the castle courtyard, flipping through the pages in his defense against the dark arts book and enjoying the sunshine. He looked around again and noticed a handsome boy in Slytherin robes walking briskly towards him. Four or five other boys, all wearing the Slytherin colors, followed after him. The boy was several feet taller than Newt. He had stylishly cut black hair. The boy reached out a hand towards Newt, and Newt instinctually shook it.

"I'm Ophid," the boy said. "Ophid Strange," he said, after noting the blank expression on Newt's face. "Your cousin."

Understanding suddenly dawned on Newt's face. "Oh, yeah," he stammered. "Nice to finally meet you."

"Yeah," Ophid replied. "My mother said I should say hello. She said Grandmother speaks very highly of you."

Newt smiled, knowing that the only reason his grandmother bragged about him was because of his mother's blackmail. Ophid smiled back dumbly. Newt looked at the other students, thinking that Ophid would introduce them to him. The thought, apparently had not crossed Ophid's mind.

"Is it your first year here too?" Newt asked, thinking of nothing better to say.

Ophid looked a little offended. "No," he said. "This is my second year."

Newt caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Serra coming towards him. She was carrying her defense against the dark arts book and wearing her headphones.

Ophid nudged Newt in the ribs and whispered to him, "watch this."

He pulled his wand out from underneath his robes and flicked it in Serra's direction. Her headphones were suddenly transfigured into a mass of squirming worms that writhed on her head and fell onto her shoulders, leaving trails of slime in their wake. She screamed, brushed madly at her hair and shoulders, and ran blindly away. The group of boys gathered around Newt burst into raucous laughter.

Ophid nudged Newt again. "That'll teach that filthy mudblood not to bring her muggle junk to school," he said, apparently thinking that Newt would be impressed. The other boys laughed even harder and began patting Ophid on the back.

The sounds of Serra's screams still echoed in Newt's ears. Red-hot anger quickly engulfed him; he shook with the force of it. He glared at Ophid; he poured all of his anger and hatred into that glare. Ophid's robes suddenly burst into flames. Ophid screamed and (choosing his direction seemingly at random) ran, flailing at his burning robe in an attempt to smother the flames. The wind of his flight fanned the flames on his back; they surged higher and brighter. The knot of Slytherin boys scattered, no longer laughing.

"What's going on here?" cried a loud, authoritative voice. Professor Lupin, still looking tired and haggard, rushed towards Ophid (who was running in circles, still screaming) and drew his wand. A jet of water suddenly spouted from Professor Lupin's wand, covering Ophid and dowsing the flames on his back.

"You," the professor shouted, pointing at Newt. "In my office in ten minutes."

Professor Lupin then turned to Ophid, who had fallen to the cobbled stone floor of the courtyard (and who's robes were dripping with water and smoking slightly), and helped him to his feet. Professor Lupin supported the boy as they walked towards an entrance to the castle, headed for the hospital wing.

_**Disclaimer: I own Ophid Strange, Serra Athena, Newt Phaeton, and Newt's family. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


	10. Detention

**Detention _(corrected version)_**

Newt silently followed Professor Lupin (who seemed wearier and shabbier than ever in the dismal half-light that surrounded them) as they descended slowly along a dark, dank stone staircase. The coarse stone stairs seemed to never end, just to spiral away forever into the inky darkness below them. The echoes of their footsteps bounced off of the hard stone stairs and mossy stone walls; they fluttered around their heads in the darkness like confused bats.

"You'll be spending the rest of the day in detention," Professor Lupin said, matter-of-factly to the boy. "You'll be spending detention in the dungeons."

Fear suddenly clenched Newt's insides. He clearly remembered hearing Mr. Filch, the school's custodian, reminiscing about the "good old days" when students were hung by their thumbs in the dungeons.

Professor Lupin didn't notice Newt's trepidation. He continued speaking.

"You'll be scrubbing the dungeon floors."

The bubble of fear that had been steadily growing in Newt's stomach suddenly popped and disappeared. He let out an audible sigh.

"Without using magic," Lupin continued.

They had reached the bottom of the staircase and he was pointing towards a wooden pail filled with sudsy water. A small brown-bristled brush lay on the stone floor next to it.

Newt, newly crestfallen after seeing the size of the dungeon floor he was supposed to clean, mumbled under his breath as he moved towards the bucket of water and the brush.

"What was that?" Lupin snapped.

Newt tensed.

"I said it doesn't matter, because I probably couldn't clean the floor by magic anyway," he answered. "I haven't been able to do any real magic."

Lupin's scowl slowly gave way to a slightly shocked expression.

"I've only been able to set stuff on fire," Newt said, sighing. "I've done plenty of that, but no real magic."

Lupin tugged at his disheveled chin for a moment, looking thoughtful.

"Not a single spell?" he asked after a moment.

Newt shook his head.

Lupin resumed his thoughtful stance.

After many tense, silent moments had passed, he pointed at the bucket of water and said, "get started scrubbing that floor. I'll be back in a few moments."

The professor turned and started to climb the stone stairs, his footfalls echoing after him as he ascended. Newt signed, dipped the brush into the bucket of warm liquid, and began to scrub the centuries-old stone floor.

Left alone in the eerie silence and the mind-numbing darkness, his hands busy scrubbing at the crumbling stone floor beneath him, his mind (having nothing to occupy it as the brush and the bucket occupied his arms and hands) began to wander aimlessly. As he scrubbed the stony surface of the dungeon floor, he thought about how he had failed repeatedly to perform even the most basic spells. Then he thought about how gifted Serra was at magic. She had mastered spells on the first day of class; she had performed magic he had never heard of before she had even set foot on the Hogwarts Express. He smiled in the darkness; though he felt a pang of jealousy for her talent, he took pride in his friend's accomplishments.

He remembered how she had mastered the charm used to repel boggarts earlier that day in defense against the dark arts.

_After Professor Lupin instructed them (thoroughly yet succinctly) how to use the spell that would repel a boggart, the students formed a slanting, disorderly line in front of a small, mirror-doored wardrobe. Serra was first in line, while Newt lingered near its rear (confident that he would accomplish no more than starting a fire somewhere in the classroom if he had to try the spell). Once the line was somewhat orderly, Professor Lupin opened the door of the wardrobe; out of it stumbled a grotesque, half-decomposed zombie, dressed in tattered gray rags and standing awkwardly on a club foot—apparently, this was the thing that Serra feared most._

_Hisses and cries of "infiri" filled the room._

_Professor Lupin (looking somehow tired, stern, excited, and friendly all at the same time) remained calm and repeated his instructions on how to repel the boggart._

"_Remember to think of something funny," he told Serra, who shook with terror at the sight of the zombie, which was slowly approaching her, dragging its club foot._

_Serra stood where she was, frozen, rigid with fear, for several moments. After a while (while the zombie continued to come slowly and painfully closer to her), a thought seemed to come to her. Serra straightened, a small smile forming on the corners of her mouth. She raised her wand proudly and shouted at the approaching zombie, "ridiculous"._

_At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then, the animated corpse stopped moving, a look of confusion slowly washing across its disfigured, worm-eaten face. Slowly, like two drops of mercury separating and then rolling apart, a new zombie coalesced out of the first one's back. The first zombie, which looked utterly surprised, twitched as another corpse formed out of its back; then another; and another; and another. The several new infiri that now stood behind the first suddenly began to multiply; five became ten; ten became twenty, twenty became forty. The students cowered backwards, pressed towards the rear wall of the class by the sheer number of infiri appearing before them. Professor Lupin seemed suddenly concerned and alert. It was clear that he feared that Serra's spell had somehow gone terribly wrong._

_The new zombies formed several straight, orderly rows behind the original, which looked down at itself, surprised. It was now wearing a strange silver polyester shirt (the top of the shirt was open, revealing the creature's decomposing chest), tight polyester pants, a large half-buckled belt, white dancing shoes, and a single white rhinestone-covered glove. Music suddenly blossomed out of the air, seemingly coming from nowhere but filling the entire room; music that was strange and unfamiliar to many of the assembled students. The lead zombie looked around in surprise and then, as if it suddenly had no control of its own body, it began to dance. It was a strange, jerking, shuffling dance that seemed suited to an animated corpse, and most of the students did not recognize it. The other zombies quickly followed after the first, dancing in perfect time with each other._

_The music swelled to a crescendo, and Newt (suddenly recognizing the song) began to laugh. The infiri were dancing the Thriller. Michael Jackson's Thriller. He began to laugh even harder. A few of the other students, mostly muggle-borns, began to join in the chorus of laughter. Most of the pure-blood students didn't understand the display, but they too soon joined in the laughter as the zombies started displaying ever stranger and more ridiculous dance moves. Soon the whole room was filled with laughter. Professor Lupin was grinning widely and shaking his head. Serra herself was bowed over with laughter._

_The lead zombie, still wearing his ridiculous clothes and his lone rhinestone glove, began to retreat (still dancing) from the sound of the laughter, back towards the open doors of the wardrobe. The rows of infiri behind it pressed together and, one row at a time, crammed themselves into the wardrobe. The students continued to laugh; the site of the zombies walking backwards while performing their ludicrous dance was even more amusing than the dance itself. Soon, all of the rows of zombies that had sprung from the original's back had disappeared into the wardrobe. With a final twitch (and while it continued to dance erratically), the original zombie backed into the wardrobe; the last glimpse the students had of the boggart as it retreated was a rhinestone-encrusted white glove withdrawing into the darkness inside the wardrobe before the door slammed behind it._

Newt laughed to himself in the darkness. He had thought that the whole scenario was hilarious. He had been having such a good day. But that had been before he had met Ophid.

He began to wonder if Serra was alright. Then Newt remembered the smirking face of Ophid Strange, immediately after he had turned Serra's headphones into a slimy mass of earthworms, bragging about the senseless act to the group of Slytherin boys that had surrounded him. Newt gripped the brush harder, his knuckles turning white on its wooden handle. He had not set the boy aflame on purpose; but he surely wasn't sorry that he had done it.

A small patch of the dungeon's floor (almost eight feet wide by eight feet deep) had been scrubbed clean by the time that Professor Lupin returned to the dungeon. Newt, on his hands and knees at the edge of this clean patch, looked up when he heard the Professor's echoing footsteps and was surprised to see a witch descending the wide stone staircase beside him. She was a thin, middle-aged woman of average height. Her hair was black, straight, and shoulder-length. It spilled out from underneath a pointy, violet hat. Her eyes were hidden behind thick circular glasses.

"Newt," he heard Professor Lupin say, "this is Professor Vector."

Newt clambered to his feet and walked over to the strange witch. He grasped her hand firmly and shook it.

"Nice to meet you," he said, a bit stiffly.

"Professor Lupin here has been telling me about the difficulties you've been having practicing magic," said the thin professor in a high-pitched but pleasant voice. "What can you tell me about that?"

"Just that nothing I try to do ever works," replied Newt, sulkily. "Everything I point my wand at seems to catch on fire."

Professor Vector nodded.

"May I see your wand?" she asked.

Newt reached into his robes, but before he pulled his wand out of his pocket, he remembered Mr. Ollivander's warning and withdrew his hand.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he told the thin witch, "but the man who sold me the wand, Mr. Ollivander, told me that it would burn anyone else who touched it."

Professor Vector did not seem offended by Newt's refusal to hand over his wand. Instead she nodded and said, "so it's an elemental wand then, yes? I might have guessed. Obviously the element of fire."

Newt nodded wordlessly.

"That will make it much harder for you to cast what we would call 'normal' spells; non-elemental spells, I mean. But I believe I can teach you to make that wand of yours work a little better at least."

"How," Newt asked the woman after a moment of awkward silence.

"I teach arithmancy," Professor Vector replied, proudly.

Newt turned a confused stare on the professor.

"Arithmancy is the arithmetic of spells," she said. "Once you've mastered arithmancy, you'll be able to divide a complicated spell into its component parts or, better yet, add spells together to create a new, more powerful, spell. I think that's what you are going to have to do."

Newt was still confused.

"Your wand is best at casting fire spells," Professor Vector explained, patiently. "But not so good at casting other spells. So, for example, if you want to cast a summoning spell…." Professor Vector pointed her wand at the brush on the dungeon floor and it flew into her outstretched hand. "Then the easiest way for you to do so is to add that spell and some sort of fire spell together to make a new spell, one that will hopefully accomplish the same goal but be easier to cast using your wand."

Newt's look of confusion slowly transformed into one of amazement.

"You mean I can cast non-fire spells by turning them into fire spells first, with arithmancy."

"That's the idea," said Professor Vector. "Now, arithmancy is an elective course, so normally you wouldn't be able to take it until your third year at Hogwarts. But I'll talk to the headmaster about it. Hopefully he'll let you start in my class after the Christmas break. How does that sound?"

"That's great!" Newt shouted, excitedly. He felt like he was finally going to learn how to do proper magic. He felt like he finally knew how to be a real wizard.

"That's wonderful," replied the professor in a much more subdued voice than Newt's. "I'll talk to Professor Dumbledore first thing tomorrow."

_**Disclaimer: I own Ophid Strange, Serra Athena, Newt Phaeton, and Newt's family. Thriller is owned by Michael Jackson. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_

**_Many thanks to Flamespirit-eth and the kid from colorado for pointing out my mis-steps. I appreciate all of your help._**


	11. Luna Was Wrong

**Luna Was Wrong**

Newt's dormitory room was small, circular, and composed almost entirely of aged gray stone. Two beds (one belonged to Newt and the other belonged to his roommate—a tall, muscular third-year student whom he had nothing in common with) were pushed against the high stone walls on either side of the room. Two high, narrow windows set into the wall between the two beds let warm afternoon sunlight spill into the sparsely-furnished room.

Newt sat cross-legged on his unmade bed, stooped low over his arithmancy textbook (which was the largest, thickest school book he had ever seen), letting the golden sunlight illuminate its pages. Professor Vector had given the book to him yesterday (after she had received approval from the Hogwarts headmaster for Newt to take the class); she had told Newt that he needed to read through the first half of the book so that he would be on an equal footing with his classmates when he started taking arithmancy after the Christmas break. Ever since receiving the book, Newt had spent every spare minute of his time with his nose buried in it. He had already read past the half-way point; he had never read anything so intriguing. He was sure that the secret of making his wand work properly was hidden somewhere in the book.

Newt wasn't sure how long he had sat there reading his textbook when he was interrupted by his roommate's voice.

"You coming to the match?"

Newt's roommate, Roc Cudgel, was a third-year student. He was one of the beaters on the Ravenclaw quiddich team.

Newt pulled his nose out of the arithmancy textbook and looked at Roc, not understanding his question.

"Are you coming to the quiddich match today?" he asked again. "It starts in about half an hour. Gryffindor is playing against Hufflepuff. It's going to be a bloodbath."

In Newt's opinion, the many revelations buried in his arithmancy textbook were much more interesting than any sporting event.

Without thinking about what he was saying, he told Roc, "I don't really like sports much."

"What?" Roc sputtered. "It's not just a sport. It's quiddich."

In Roc's opinion, nothing in the world was more interesting or more important than quiddich.

"Thanks," Newt said, trying to be polite. "But I just don't like sports."

Newt buried his nose back in his textbook. He didn't see Roc's face turn crimson. He didn't see him turn and stomp furiously out of the room.

Newt, once again, became immersed in his arithmancy book, unaware of the passage of time. Soon he began to hear the sounds of the game (furiously cheering crowds, the magically amplified voice of the commentator, the melody of clanging bells that rang out whenever a point was scored) through his open window.

After a while, the light streaming into the small room through its tall windows became inadequate to illuminate the pages of the book. Without thinking about it, Newt pointed his wand at the small oil lamp that sat on the small dresser next to his bed; it lit instantaneously, filling the room with warm and gentle light.

After un-numbered minutes, the strain of reading by lamplight began to tire his eyes. He pulled his face out of his book, leaned back on the bed, and rubbed at his tired eyes. He glanced toward the window and realized why it had suddenly become so dark. The sky, which had been a gentle, comforting cloudless blue hours earlier, had turned dark and foreboding, filled with broiling thunderheads. Beyond the windowpane, icy needles of rain fell from the dusky evening sky. Despite the darkness and the icy rain, the raucous sounds of the quiddich match still poured into his room through the open window.

Newt got up and closed the windows; he almost slipped several times on the cold rainwater that had poured into the room over the stone windowpanes and pooled on the room's stone floor. After the windows were closed and the sounds of the ongoing quiddich match were somewhat muffled, Newt lit more lamps and, after fluffing his pillow and propping it against the headboard, sat back down on his bed with his sore legs stretched out and his back resting against the headboard. He picked up his textbook and resumed reading.

Newt's reading was interrupted again when he realized he was shivering. A chill that seemed unconnected with the cold rain had suddenly settled over his dormitory room. He reached for his bed covers, seeking refuge from the cold; then he heard the sounds of glass shattering. Newt jumped quickly to his feet as he saw a grimly floating shadow (a dementor) squeeze into his room through the broken window. Another dementor entered moments later, twisting its limbs in an inhuman way in order to do so. A thick mist poured into the room through the window after them.

The two dementors, hidden behind their long dark cloaks, clenched and unclenched their fists menacingly. Their deep, raspy breathing seemed to fill the room. Newt turned and ran. He had almost reached the doorway out of the room when two cloaked and menacing figures (another pair of dementors) floated out from behind the doorway and into the room.

The four dementors spread around the room, flanking him. One of them knocked a lit lamp out of its way with a scabbed, half-rotten hand. The lamp crashed onto Roc's bed, split open, and spilled its contents onto the bed sheets. A column of flame erupted from the center of the bed. It quickly spread to the curtains around the two windows. Even though they were wet from the rain, they were instantly engulfed in flames; smoke rose from the burning curtains and pooled against the stone ceiling.

The four dementors, oblivious of the fire, advanced towards Newt. Without thinking about what he was doing, he pointed his wand at the quickly-growing fire; it suddenly grew higher and hotter. Newt, still not acting consciously, twirled his wand in a circle above his head. The flames leapt from the burning bed and soared (seemingly of their own accord) around the room, forming a bright fiery halo that surrounded the room and engulfed the four dementors.

Newt—stunned by fear and suddenly overcome by the dark, oily smoke that was quickly filling the room—put his hands on his knees at the center of the ring of fire and coughed uncontrollably. He looked up and saw a sight that filled him with terror. The four dementors, oblivious of their burning cloaks, were still advancing towards him. Before he knew it, they were on top of him. One of them grabbed his wrists; his wand flew out of his hand and clattered away across the stone floor. Another of the dementors held his shoulders while a third grabbed his chin. With a slow and insistent pressure, the clammy hands around his chin forced his face upwards. The fourth dementor floated above him, drifting among the greasy smoke like a phantasm.

As the hands around Newt's chin forced his face towards the ceiling, the dementor floating there descended towards him. Within moments, its cold, toothless mouth was inches away from his. Above the roar of the flames, he could hear the ragged breathing of the dementors. The one floating above him began to make a horrible wet sucking sound, the same horrible sound he had heard on the Hogwarts Express. The marrow of his bones seemed to freeze.

He kicked out against the restraining arms of the dementors with all of his might, but they did not release him. Trembling with fear and revulsion, he closed his eyes as the dementor above him pressed its hideous mouth against his.

After he had arrived at Hogwarts and began his classes, Newt had read about dementors in his defense against the dark arts textbook. He knew what they were going to do to him. _The dementor's kiss._

Newt also knew that the only thing that could defeat a dementor was a patronus; and he knew that he was not powerful enough to conjure one. Like the last time he had faced a dementor, the worst moments of his life began to flash like a slideshow against his closed eyelids: the many years he had spent in the Boston public school system, where the other children endlessly teased him and tormented him; the loneliness and desolation he had felt when his father died; the feeling of helplessness he had felt when he realized, days after arriving at Hogwarts, that he could not perform even the simplest magic properly; the horrible screams of the dementor on the train when the flames on its back had turned white.

_White fire_, he suddenly thought. _White, like a patronus' light._ That was why the dementor on the train had fled; Newt had imbued the fire with some of the attributes of a patronus' light.

The cold, clammy lips of the dementor above him were clamped hard against his. The bony hands around his chin squeezed, forcing his jaws open. Flames licked up and down that hand, but the dementor it belonged to seemed not to notice.

_No_, Newt thought desperately. _No! No! No!_

"No!" Newt screamed with all of his might.

The flames around Newt and the four dementors doubled in intensity; they surged higher, brighter, and hotter. Newt opened his eyes; all he could see was blinding red and yellow fire. Columns of flame flew from the backs of the dementors. Startled, momentarily confused, they released their grip on the boy.

Newt fell to his hands and knees and scrambled along the floor after his fallen wand. He groped among the choking smoke and the blinding flames for what seemed to him like an eternity; then his hand closed on the salamander-scale wand. Grasping his recovered wand with all of his strength, he rose to his feet and turned back towards his assailants. The four dementors had already shaken off their confusion and were already rushing towards the boy, soaring towards him through the smoky, flaming room like ebon-winged vultures. The four of them were inches away from him and approaching quickly.

Newt stood his ground. A sudden, inexplicable calm filled him; he knew what he had to do. He pointed his wand at the approaching dementors.

The halo of fire surrounding the room turned blindingly white. The flames on the beds, the dressers, and curtains turned white. The flames on the dementors' cloaks turned white.

Terrible, agonizing screams filled the small stone room. The dementors writhed in pain and flung themselves blindly around the room, their pursuit of the boy forgotten in the fog of pain. One of them collided with newt and he was thrown backward onto the hard floor.

One of the dementors thrashed against the high ceiling. The other three flew, screeching, around the room, knocking over the furniture and ramming themselves blindly against the walls. The sound of their bones splintering as they collided with the hard stone walls was sickening, but it was drowned out by their nauseating, inhuman screams.

Newt cowered against the floor, his hands over his head, adding his screams to the hellish chorus that filled the room. The screaming and thrashing of the dementors seemed to Newt to last forever. He thought his mind would explode from the sound of it.

Eventually the dementors' hellish wails became quieter, more strained. One by one, the inhuman voices fell silent. Newt uncovered his head and looked around. Three of the creatures were scattered across the room, crumpled on the floor, their motionless bodies still engulfed in blinding white fire. The fourth dementor, still screaming with all its might (although those screams were quickly growing quieter) was still thrashing against the room's ceiling. After a moment, it too became quiet; it fell to the floor with a sickening thud and was still.

Eventually, the flames that surrounded the room and engulfed its contents dwindled and died out. The beds, the curtains, the dressers, and everything else in the room had been completely consumed by flame. Newt's arithmancy book was a charred husk that lay on the exposed springs of his burnt bed. The four dementors still lay on the floor where they had fallen.

Newt, gathering all the courage he could muster, walked slowly towards the nearest of them and, tentatively, nudged it with the toe of his shoe. It did not respond. Newt looked more closely at it. It was nothing but a charred corpse. It was dead.

Before Newt could examine the other bodies, the four of them dissolved into a thick gray mist that clung to the floor like oil. After several minutes, the strange mist dissipated; nothing but ashes (the remains of their dark cloaks) remained of the four monstrous creatures.

_Luna was wrong_, Newt thought to himself as he looked at the devastation around him. _They can be killed._

_**Disclaimer: I own Roc Cudgel, Ophid Strange, Serra Athena, Newt Phaeton, and Newt's family. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


	12. Harry Potter

**Harry Potter**

The bed that Newt lay on was hard and unyielding, much unlike his comfortable bed in Ravenclaw tower, which was now nothing more than a charred, ashy husk. After the flames that had engulfed his dormitory room and all of its contents had dwindled and died, Newt, choking on the oily smoke that had filled the room, had slowly made his way (constantly stumbling and grasping the corridor walls for support) down from Ravenclaw tower and to the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey, the school nurse, shocked at his condition, had cleansed his lungs of the tar-like smoke; noting that he had cracked his skull (the only time he could think of when it could have happened was when the flaming dementor had blindly knocked him head-first onto the stone floor), Madam Pomfrey had bandaged his head and ordered him to lie down. He lay there still, immobile against the hard white bed, his head wrapped in multiple layers of off-white bandages (it looked like he was wearing a large turban).

Despite the pain in his cracked head and the innumerable other aches and pains that infested his body, he felt wonderful. He had escaped the dementor's kiss. He was alive. He was sane. All of his pains and fears were nothing more than glorious proof that he was still alive and whole.

Newt had not been in the hospital wing for long when, without warning, a group of students wearing crimson and gold robes suddenly rushed into the room carrying between them an unconscious body. Newt sat up in the hard bed (even though it pained him to do so) and watched the newcomers with great interest. The group of students (which appeared to be the entire Gryffindor quiddich team) was accompanied by several members of the Hogwarts staff, including the headmaster, Professor Dumbledore. That was the first time, excluding the feast at the beginning of the year, that Newt had ever seen the headmaster; he was amazed, now that he saw him up close, how old and frail he looked. At the same time, however, Professor Dumbledore appeared strong and confident, seemingly invincible.

Before he was able to discern the identity of the unconscious figure, Newt was distracted by a comforting hand being placed lightly on his shoulder. He looked up into Serra's large blue eyes, which seemed full of concern for him. Newt, who was still elated about being alive, could not have been more delighted to see her. In the new light in which he saw the world (bathed in the joyous shades of his continued existence), she looked beautiful. Newt thought, jocularly, that she looked almost like a stranger without her headphones on. He almost laughed out loud.

"What happened to you?" Serra asked him gently.

"I'm OK," Newt replied, smiling. "I just hit my head."

"I'm Serious. What happened to you?" Serra said, almost shouting. "Your room's been totally destroyed. Everything is burnt. The common room is full of smoke. What happened?"

Newt looked up into Serra's concerned eyes for uncounted moments.

"Dementors attacked me," he said in a low, calm voice that belied his euphoria at simply being alive.

Serra stared at him dumbly, her face full of shock and horror. Without further prompting, Newt began to describe, in as much detail as he could, what had transpired in his dormitory room. He described how the four dementors had surrounded him. He told her how they had attempted to give him the kiss. He explained to her how, with the use of arithmancy, he had repeated the unnamed spell which had saved them on the Hogwarts Express, a spell that he had originally cast by sheer instinct.

When he had finished his tale, Serra (still shaken and pale) asked, "are you sure they're dead? Didn't Luna say that dementors couldn't be killed?"

"They're dead," Newt replied firmly. "I saw them sort of dissolve in front of me. It was horrible, actually."

Serra suddenly looked nauseated.

"There were several big,"—she paused, searching for the right words—"stains,"—she repressed a shudder—"on the floor of your room," she said.

Newt patted her hand, which still rested on his shoulder. The headmaster had left the room while he and Serra had been talking, but the Gryffindor quiddich team remained; they were knotted around a bed at the other end of the room. Even more students had joined them in their vigil over the unconscious body.

In an attempt to lead their conversation away from his confrontation with the dementors, Newt asked, "who is that over there?"

"Oh," Serra said, sounding as if she had just remembered that the two of them weren't alone. "That's Harry Potter. He was attacked by dementors during the quiddich match."

"Harry Potter," Newt exclaimed. "The boy everyone keeps talking about? He was attacked too?"

A couple of the students grouped around Harry Potter's bed looked towards him as his voice echoed through the room. At that moment, however, the boy on the bed stirred and they quickly returned their attention to him.

"I think so," Serra replied. Unlike Newt, she had been in the stands during the game.

"He flew up into the clouds to look for the golden snitch (that's the ball that you have to catch to end the game) and everybody lost sight of him. After a while, though, someone noticed dementors flying around the quiddich pitch; and then someone saw Harry falling out of the sky. Headmaster Dumbledore saved Harry and ordered the dementors away. He looked really angry. Everyone thinks that Harry must have seen the dementors and fallen off of his broom."

From the other end of the room, the two of them heard Harry Potter (who had apparently regained consciousness at some point during Newt's and Serra's conversation) ask the group of friends that surrounded him who had won the match. Serra informed Newt (though he didn't ask and really didn't care) that the Hufflepuff team had won the match. Newt heard Harry groan as someone in the group of students clustered around him delivered the same news.

"You should come to the next game," Serra told Newt. "I know you don't like sports, but quiddich is very exciting. It's not at all like cricket or rugby or any of the other sports they play in muggle school."

"I don't know what cricket and rugby are like anyway," retorted Newt. "I went to school in America, remember. We played baseball and football."

"Whatever," replied Serra. "The point is that you never played baseball or football while flying around on broomsticks. Quiddich is really cool."

Newt and Serra passed several hours in quiet conversation, always avoiding the subject of the dementors' unexplained animosity towards Newt, until nearly curfew, when Madam Pomfrey ushered Serra and Harry Potter's visitors out of the room. As she passed his bed, Newt gave the nurse a meaningful look.

"You need to stay here tonight, Mr. Phaeton," she told him. "I want to make sure you don't hit that head of yours again."

After the nurse had bustled out of the room, Newt looked across the room at Harry Potter. Normally, Newt was shy and introverted. Perhaps because he was still euphoric about surviving the dementors' attack, or perhaps because he was curious about why Harry (like Newt) seemed to draw the dementors' wrath, he slowly got out of his hard bed and walked across the room.

A shattered broomstick lay on a small table next to Harry's bed. Harry, who was glaring at it with a look of deep regret on his face, didn't notice Newt approaching him.

Harry Potter didn't look at all like what Newt had expected. Judging from the stories he had heard of Harry (that he had defeated trolls, slain basilisks, and even confronted the evil Lord Voldemort), Newt expected him to be hugely muscular and at least eight feet tall. Instead, Harry Potter was thin and of average height. He wore glasses and his hair was messy and disheveled. Newt could see the corner of a lightning bolt-shaped scar on Harry's forehead peeking out from under his uncombed hair.

"So," Newt said, "you were attacked by dementors too."

Harry seemed to snap out of his contemplation of the broomstick.

"They attacked you too?" he exclaimed, sitting up straighter in his bed.

"Yeah," Newt said. Then he held out his hand. "I'm Newt. Newt Phaeton."

"Harry Potter," Harry said as he shook Newt's hand. "Why do you think they attacked you?" he asked; apparently the reason behind the dementors' actions was an enigma that had been on his mind for a while.

"I think they attacked me because they know I know how to hurt them. I think they're scared of me."

Harry looked confused.

"How do you hurt them?" Harry asked after a while.

"I don't know how to describe it," Newt said, honestly. "I just know how to make white fire."

Harry's look of confusion deepened, but Newt pressed on.

"I think they saw me make white fire on the train and they think I'm dangerous. I think they're trying to kill me." _Or worse_, he added to himself; a bit of his elation at being alive evaporated.

"They attacked you on the train too?" Harry asked, amazed. "And you hurt them?"

Newt nodded. "One of them," he clarified.

"Professor Lupin saved me," Harry said. "He scared the dementor away. If he hadn't been there…." Harry shuddered.

"I saw him," Newt said, brightening. "He drove the dementors away with a patronus. Have you read about how to make a patronus?"

Harry shook his head wearily.

"Maybe you should ask Professor Lupin to show you how," Newt suggested. "He seems like a good teacher. I enjoyed his class about boggarts."

Harry (who was looking away, seemingly thinking long and hard about the prospect of asking Professor Lupin to help him) turned back to Newt at the mention of boggarts. His eyes swam quickly out of focus again; he seemed to be thinking hard (and not fondly) about his own experiences in Professor Lupin's class.

"Yeah," he said, still lost in his own thoughts. It seemed that Harry had not enjoyed Professor Lupin's demonstration with the boggart.

Newt was about to tell Harry about Serra's boggart (how she had made the boggart, when it had taken the shape of a zombie, dance the Thriller until it retreated back into the wardrobe) when Madam Pomfrey returned to the room and, seeing Newt standing next to Harry's bed, ushered him swiftly back to his own bed, cutting Newt's and Harry's conversation short.

Newt, suddenly realizing how exhausted he was, lay back down in his hard bed and fell swiftly to sleep. Flaming, shrieking dementors and strangely-clothed dancing infiri filled his dreams, which alternated throughout the night between comedy and tragedy, between fantasy and nightmare.

_**Disclaimer: I own Roc Cudgel, Ophid Strange, Serra Athena, Newt Phaeton, and Newt's family. Thriller is owned by Michael Jackson. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


	13. The Defiled Stone

**The Defiled Stone**

Memories of dementors' screams echoed in Newt's head as he climbed the stone stairs from the Ravenclaw common room towards his dormitory room. The students he had passed on his way from the hospital wing to the Ravenclaw tower had seemed disinclined to talk to him; most of them had refused to even make eye contact with him. Everyone he had passed seemed to know (as demonstrated by their silent aversion to him) that he had caused the fire in the Ravenclaw tower. He knew that Serra had told her fellow Ravenclaws about Newt's ordeal after returning to the tower from the hospital wing. Most or all of them, it seemed, did not believe Newt's story about being attacked by dementors.

When Newt had arrived at the door to the Ravenclaw common room and knocked, the bronze eagle-shaped doorknocker had come to life and asked, in a soft musical voice, "What kind of fire creates no smoke?"

The enchanted doorknocker, it had seemed, had decided to incorporate the recent fire into its riddles. Newt had interpreted this development as further proof that he was becoming alienated from his fellow students.

After a few moments of thought, Newt had replied, "the fire of life that burns in every living thing."

After contemplating his answer for a few seconds (Newt had thought it was odd to see a look of contemplation on a bronze eagle's face), the doorknocker had said, "a good answer."

The door had swung inward to admit him.

When Newt crossed the threshold into his dormitory room, he immediately noticed the four greasy black stains that Serra had told him about; the stains were seemingly seared into the floor in the places where the dementors had died; their very presence seemed to defile the stone.

Next, Newt noticed that the rest of the room had been cleaned and repaired. The beds and other furniture had been replaced. The dark blue curtains and matching bedclothes had been replaced. The smoke and soot that had built up against the room's high ceiling had been magically scrubbed away (the golden stars painted there seemed dull and worn now). Apparently, the Hogwarts staff had been unable to remove the stains that the dementors' dissolving remains had left on the floor (by magic or any other means).

Roc, Newt's roommate, was sitting on his new bed (its shape was slightly different than his old bed, the one that had been destroyed in the fire). He appeared to be writing a letter. When he saw Newt enter the room, Roc's quill paused over the parchment.

"You!" Roc exclaimed. "My books! My clothes! Everything I own! Destroyed! Burned! Because of you!"

Newt stammered, unable to find a suitable reply. He didn't have long to think about it, however, because Roc suddenly lunged toward him and, before Newt really knew what was going on, punched him hard in the midsection. Newt bowed over with pain, his wind knocked out of him. After a second he fell to his knees, clutching his bruised stomach, and landed face-first next to one of the inky stains that marred the stone floor. Roc stormed angrily out of the room.

Newt didn't know how long he lay there clutching his stomach and staring sideways at the disgusting black stain. He decided (as he lay there thinking about what had just happened) that he wasn't mad at Roc. All of his belongings had been destroyed in the fire that Newt had caused. Newt figured that he might have acted the same way if he had been in Roc's position. Eventually, Newt heard the sound of approaching footsteps echoing off of the stone corridor behind him. He tensed, waiting for Roc to deal another blow.

Instead, he heard a soft voice ask "are you OK? What are you doing in the floor?"

It was Serra.

"I'm OK," Newt said as he rose to his feet, wincing with pain as he did so. "I just fell down."

From the look on Serra's face, Newt could tell that she didn't believe him. Newt had decided not to tell anybody about Roc's assault on him; he had decided to try and forgive him. After a moment, the look on Serra's face was replaced by an odd expression of concern. Newt sat down on his new bed.

"You were right. They really are nasty," Newt said, indicating the four grotesque stains on the room's floor.

"Oh yeah," Serra exclaimed, as though she had just been shaken out of a daydream. "That's what I came up here to talk to you about."

She sat down next to Newt on his bed.

"The teachers who cleaned up your room after the fire tried every spell they knew, but they couldn't get those stains off of the floor. Apparently dying dementors make quite a mess. But I think I've found a way to cover them up."

She reached into her pocket and took out her wand. She looked at Newt, asking for permission with her eyes; Newt nodded his head.

"Go ahead," he said.

Serra waved her wand at the stone floor and muttered a long string of words that Newt could not understand. The room began suddenly to vibrate. Very slowly, thin soft blades of what looked like dark blue grass began to grow out of the barren rock. It continued to grow until it was several inches thick and the horrible stains on the floor were completely hidden from view. Newt and Serra jumped down from the bed and ran their toes through the dark blue growth. It was carpet. Serra's spell had covered the hard stone floor in soft, lush carpet.

Newt gave Serra a swift hug. After he released her, he began walking briskly across the soft new carpet, savoring its texture.

"Thanks a lot," he said. "That's much better. How did you do it?"

"It took a while to get the spell right," she said. "So if you see eight different colors of carpet growing right outside my dormitory room, don't pay much attention to it (I'll get rid of it as soon as I figure out how)."

Newt laughed out loud.

"Professor Flitwick says that trial and error is an important part of mastering any spell," Serra said in her defense. To change the subject, she asked, "are you ready for class? History of magic starts in about twenty minutes."

All of Newt's books had been destroyed, so he had nothing to carry to class with him.

"I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be," he replied.

Serra ran to her room and grabbed her books. She also grabbed a spare quill and some parchment for Newt. She met Newt in the common room underneath the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw. Before they left the common room, Serra did something that Newt thought was very strange. She took two corks (the kind used to seal bottles of pumpkin juice) out of a pocket and placed one in each of her ears. Then she pushed the "play" button on the walkman that was clipped to her robes.

"What on earth are you doing?" Newt asked, incredulous.

Serra, obviously having seen his lips move but not heard him, pushed the "stop" button on her walkman, pulled the cork out of one of her ears, and said, "what?"

"I asked why you are putting corks in your ears," Newt told her.

"Oh," she replied. "I bewitched them to work like speakers. See?"

She held the cork up to Newt's ear and pressed the "play" button again. Newt suddenly heard loud music coming out of the small cork.

"Pretty neat, huh?" Serra asked him.

Newt nodded his head.

"Did you know that electronics aren't even supposed to work at Hogwarts?" she asked Newt as she shoved the cork back into her own ear.

He shook his head in response.

"It's true. I read it in _Hogwarts: A History. _Anyway, enchantments have been put on the castle, the grounds, and even the Hogwarts Express to prevent electronics from working here. I had to put counter-enchantments on all of my stuff before I left for school. It's kind of like putting a bubble of anti-magic around them, if that makes any since."

Newt gave her a confused look.

"Think of it like this," she said. "The enchantments around Hogwarts are like a bubble around the school. So I put a bubble around my Game Boy and my walkman so that they wouldn't be inside the other bubble."

Newt still looked confused. Serra took a different tact.

"Think of a lake," she said. "Outside the lake you can breathe because there is air, but inside the lake there is no air so you can't breathe. It's kind of like a bubble of non-air. So I did what divers do. They put a bubble of air around them so that they can breathe even inside the bubble of non-air. A bubble within a bubble. It took me weeks to figure out how to do that. I finally found the solution in a sixth year textbook."

Newt decided he would never understand, but he nodded his head as if he did. Together they walked down from the Ravenclaw tower and towards the history of magic classroom.

_**Disclaimer: I own Roc Cudgel, Ophid Strange, Serra Athena, Newt Phaeton, and Newt's family. Game Boy is owned by Nintendo. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


	14. Troublesome Feline

**Troublesome Feline**

Newt and Serra stood side by side at Hogsmeade station, waiting for the Hogwarts Express to arrive and take them home for the holidays. Their trunks were piled around their feet. Serra's trunk was filled with clothes, spell books, and other personal items (her portable television and VCR—which she had never gotten to work inside of Hogwarts due to the lack of electricity—as well as a collection of Game Boy cartridges and cassette tapes). Newt's trunk contained his cauldron, the only thing he owned that had survived the fire in his dormitory room.

Serra had received near-perfect scores on all of her mid-term examinations. For her mid-term test in transfiguration, she had given her cat, Flower, wings. They looked like a raven's wings except that their feathers were the same bright purple color as Flower's fur. Professor McGonagall had been impressed both by Serra's creative use of partial transfiguration and by the fact that the cat's wings, which sprouted from her back near her shoulders, actually allowed the cat to fly. Flower had stretched her new appendages and soared several times around the classroom; it had taken Serra several minutes to coax the cat down from the ceiling by offering her a piece of pumpkin bread (the cat had already been caught and tucked tightly underneath Serra's arm before she had realized that she didn't care much for the bread).

Newt had received better grades than he had expected. The two tests he had dreaded most (those for charms and transfiguration, both of which included practical examinations) had gone better than he had expected. During his charms test, he had managed to levitate a feather by heating the air underneath it. He had been worried that Professor Flitwick would subtract points from his score because he had not spoken the spell out loud (in an attempt to disguise the fact that he wasn't using the spell he was supposed to). The professor, however, had been impressed by Newt's use of nonverbal magic (which, Professor Flitwick told him, was very hard for most wizards to accomplish) and had given him bonus points on the exam.

For his mid-term exam in transfiguration, Newt had given Flower the ability to breathe fire. When he had designed the spell, Newt had thought it would be amusing and harmless; as soon as he had cast it, however, he had discovered that he had been wrong. Flower had quickly struggled out of Serra's arms and had resumed circling through the air around the room's ceiling, this time terrorizing the other animals in the classroom by shooting streams of fire at them. The cat had refused to descend, even when students throughout the class—fearing that the written portion of their exams would be destroyed by the cat's fiery breath and that they would have to retake them—had begun to offer their snacks (chocolate frogs and every flavor beans, among others things) to her. Eventually, Professor McGonagall had summoned a house elf, who arrived with a tray of sausages left over from that morning's breakfast. Upon seeing the proffered meat, Flower had eagerly descended and, after reheating them with a burst of flame, had quickly consumed the sausages on the tray. Soon thereafter, the cat had once again been tucked firmly under Serra's arm. Newt, much to his surprise, had passed the test.

Flower crouched in her small travel cage, which sat on the platform next to Serra's trunk. The cat apparently disliked being confined to the cage; she belched fire at the ankles of anyone who came within range. A passing student made the mistake of walking too close to the cage and jumped backwards towards Newt and Serra when his shoelaces caught on fire. His shoulder connected with Newt, who was knocked sideways into a pile of luggage. The pile trembled portentously for a moment, and then fell forward onto Newt's head and shoulders. The boy hurried away without apologizing, trying to smother the flames on his shoes.

Serra grabbed Newt's wrist and yanked him upright. He stumbled for a moment on the fallen luggage that was scattered around their feet and almost fell again. Serra caught him by the shoulders to steady him; he winced with pain and bit his lip to keep himself from crying out.

Serra gave him a questioning look. Without warning, she grabbed a sleeve of Newt's robes and yanked it up his arm, revealing a row of painful-looking purple bruises.

"Roc is still beating on you?" she asked indignantly.

Newt didn't immediately answer. Ever since Newt had set fire to the Ravenclaw tower, Roc had been beating him up almost daily.

"Newt," Serra continued, "if you don't stand up to him, he's never going to stop beating you up. He's four times yours size."

"I set everything he owns on fire, Serra. He has good reason to be mad at me."

"That's ridiculous," Serra yelled. "His stuff burned while you were fighting dementors, while you were trying to save your life."

"Yeah, but nobody believes me," Newt said gloomily.

"I believe you," Serra said defensively. "And Luna believes you too."

"But she said it was impossible to kill a dementor," Newt objected.

Serra shrugged.

"She told me it wouldn't be the first time she had been proven wrong."

Newt pulled his sleeve back down over his arm and, because he couldn't think of anything else to say to Serra, began picking up the fallen luggage and stacking them in a neat pile.

To change the subject, he said, "Why do I have to share a room with a third year student anyway? Shouldn't the first year students be put together?"

"I think that's the way they do it in the other houses," Serra said; she had also begun picking up the fallen trunks and suitcases. "But in Ravenclaw they always put first-year students in rooms with older students. The older student is supposed to be a kind of mentor, somebody who helps the new student figure out how things are done at Hogwarts. It's supposed to encourage us to learn from one another; kind of like an apprenticeship."

Newt snorted derisively. _The system obviously isn't working in my case_, he thought.

"Haven't you finished reading _Hogwarts: A History_? It describes how the four houses of Hogwarts were founded and it lists the differences between them."

Newt had stopped reading his copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ when he received his arithmancy textbook (which he had found to be immensely more interesting). Both books, however, were now gone; nothing remained of them but ashes. He had gotten through the remainder of the first half of the year by borrowing books from Serra and his professors. He would have to buy new books before returning for the second half of the year. He didn't want to think about how that would affect his mother, who didn't have much money.

"My roommate is a girl named Cho Chang," Serra continued. "She's in her third year, like Roc."

Newt, still lost in his thoughts, made a noncommittal grunting sound.

"She's nice, I guess. She seems a little flaky though. Her giggly little friends always come into our room and gossip while I'm trying to study."

Newt and Serra let their conversation trail off into silence. They quickly finished restacking the trunks that Newt had knocked over. The Hogwarts Express arrived soon thereafter; its brakes squealing and hissing as it pulled into Hogsmeade station. Flower, who apparently thought the Hogwarts Express was hissing at her, hissed back at the crimson train and shot a stream of fire towards it. Several students jumped out of the way as the jet of fire screamed past them.

Serra lifted Flower's cage off of the station floor and whispered reassuringly to the troublesome feline. Newt grabbed one end of Serra's trunk (which was fuller and much heavier than Newt's trunk) and she grabbed the other. The two of them boarded the train together, Newt and Serra carrying her trunk between them, Newt dragging his behind him. They found an empty compartment and sat down together; they sat in companionable silence as the Hogwarts Express raced back towards London.

**_Disclaimer: I own Roc Cudgel, Ophid Strange, Serra Athena, Newt Phaeton, and Newt's family. Game Boy is owned by Nintendo. All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling._**


	15. Grandmother's House

**Grandmother's House**

Newt landed uncomfortably on the grate in his grandmother's living room fireplace, amidst a swirl of verdant flames. He had never traveled by floo powder before and was unprepared for the experience. Moments ago, he had been crouched in the small fireplace in his mother's flat in London (the apartment was small but pleasant, and the colorful decorations scattered throughout the space—as well as the handsomely-trimmed fir tree that bulged in one corner—made it seem even smaller but even more pleasant). Then his mother, after kissing him tenderly on one cheek, had tossed a pinch of fine black powder (which she had kept, for reasons unknown to Newt until that moment, in a small ceramic pot next to the fireplace ever since they had moved to London) into the grate. Hot emerald flames had suddenly engulfed him; he had been momentarily blinded by the swirling flames that danced in front of his eyes. Now he was standing in a stranger's fireplace (which was much larger than his mother's had been—large enough for a grown man to stand up in) and staring out into a living room that was nothing at all like the one he had just left.

The room he found himself in was much larger than his mother's apartment. The ceiling was high and vaulted; the stucco walls were trimmed with intricately-patterned moldings; the floor was covered in thick pile carpet. The walls were painted a bright and gaudy pink. The luxurious carpet was a slightly lighter shade of the same shocking color. Ceramic plates of all sizes and shapes, each bearing a portrait of a kitten (or in some cases a litter of kittens) were hung, clustered thickly together, from floor to ceiling on three of the walls. Newt noticed immediately that the portraits were magical. The kittens moved ceaselessly within their ceramic frames (licking their paws, or playing with twine, or wrestling playfully with one another). Some of them meowed softly, and the nerve-rattling sound of cats filled the room. The fourth wall (Newt had to crane his neck to see it from within the fireplace) was mysteriously blank. Newt noticed a deep rut in the thick carpet that ran between the blank wall and the opposite side of the room.

Newt timidly stepped forward out of the fireplace. Soon thereafter, he noticed that he was covered in soot (his ash-smeared form stood out in stark contrast against the overly bright and colorful room) and began slapping at his soiled cloak, trying to shake the clinging particles off of his clothes (and dislodging a tiny cloud of charcoal dust in the process). He stopped abruptly, however, when he felt an alien pair of hands tugging at the hem of his cloak. He looked down and saw a tiny creature on its hands and knees scrubbing diligently at his shoes. Newt froze. The creature must have sensed his apprehension because it suddenly looked up at him questioningly.

A small, frightened scream escaped from Newt's throat as he jumped backwards into the fireplace. Puffs of ash wafted upward from the grate as he landed awkwardly on top of it. The creature, frightened by Newt's sudden outburst, jumped backwards several feet as well.

The creature was about three feet tall, with stick-skinny arms and legs and a huge, bulbous head. It had a misshapen, tomato-like nose that looked like it had been squashed flat and wide flat nostrils like those of a pig. It had big, fleshy ears that drooped like a basset hound's. Instead of clothes, it wore a tattered pillow case decorated with a delicate pink and white flower pattern. On its head, it wore a lacy pink doily. Its large, orb-like eyes stared at Newt in confusion.

"Please pardon me, little master," the creature said after it had settled its nerves. Its voice was high and squeaky and full of prostration. "But the mistress would be very angry if Slappy allowed her carpets to get dirty."

It took him a few moments, but Newt eventually managed to calm himself (the creature was obviously not going to hurt him, but its strange appearance frightened him just the same).

"I'm sorry," Newt replied, hesitantly. "You just startled me."

The creature, Slappy, seemed at once to be frightened, confused, and ashamed by Newt's words.

"Please do not apologize to Slappy little master," the creature said in return. "Slappy is undeserving of a wizards apologies. Slappy just wants to make her mistress proud by keeping her carpets clean."

The creature's self-abasement confused and saddened Newt, but eventually he obeyed its request and stepped forward again to let Slappy clean his shoes. As the strange creature finished its task and got up from the floor, Newt recalled the conversation he had had with his mother earlier that day.

"_Your grandmother is a very important person at the Ministry of Magic," Newt's mother told him._ "_She is used to formalities, so be on your very best manners."_

"_But why do I have to visit her all by myself," Newt whined, dismayed at the prospect of being alone with the hateful face he had seen months ago in his mother's fireplace._

"_I don't know for sure," his mother replied. "She said she wanted you to join her for dinner, alone, so she could talk to you about school. She said...". His mother paused, trying not to sound hurt. "She said she didn't need a squib fumbling around her house and getting in the way."_

_Newt didn't know what to say to comfort his mother, so he reached up and hugged her tightly._

"_Just try not to upset her," his mother said, wiping her eyes. "Be as polite as you can."_

"Thank you," Newt said to the small creature at his feet, striving to be polite.

The creature again seemed confused. It stared at him blankly for a few seconds.

"You are… You are welcome, little master," Slappy said in a slow, hesitant voice. Then, reverting back to a subservient tone: "please follow Slappy, little master, and Slappy will take you to her mistress."

Newt followed the little creature as it lead him out of the living room and into a long, narrow hall. Doorways along both sides of the hall opened into other rooms, some large and grand like the living room and some small and stuffy. Each room had the same gaudy pink walls and glaring pink carpet that was in the living room. In each room, kitten-bearing plates covered three of the four walls. One wall in each room was free from decoration and in each room there was a deep rut in the pile carpet leading to the unfurnished wall. Newt did not see a single Christmas decoration anywhere in the many rooms he passed.

At the end of the hall, Slappy turned and, with a low bow, indicated that Newt should enter the doorway on his right.

"Thank you," Newt said to the creature again, and again it looked utterly confused by his words. Slappy seemed too timid to answer him this time and, instead, bowed low again and retreated briskly down the hall.

Newt walked through the doorway on his right and found himself in a large dining room. An enormous table, as dark as midnight and more intricately carved than any he had ever seen before, stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by dark, high-backed chairs. On the other side of it sat a short, dainty woman wearing a girlish pink sweater vest over her robes and a giant, bright pink bow in her hair. Kittens frolicked within the plates that covered every square inch of the wall behind her. She was looking intently downward at a stack of scrolls that sat on the table in front of her and did not seem to notice Newt as he entered the room. He watched as she read one scroll slowly and carefully, signed it at the bottom with business-like efficiency, then set it aside and opened the next scroll in the stack. Newt looked more closely and noticed that "WOW" was stenciled in intricate gold leaf at the top of each scroll. Then he realized that he was looking at them upside down; they were actually stenciled with the letters "MOM".

_MOM, for Ministry of Magic_, he thought to himself, but the image (the small old woman sitting there ignoring him, practically labeled with the word "mom" but totally unlike any mother Newt could imagine) disturbed him deeply.

Newt grew impatient and walked towards the busy woman, stepping over the rut in the carpet that lead to the room's blank wall as he did so. The movement broke her concentration and she looked up at him, a tight scowl etched across her wrinkled, toad-like face. Newt recognized the unsmiling, craggy face he had seen in his mother's fireplace months ago and knew that this woman was his grandmother.

After a second or two, the scowl disappeared and was quickly replaced by an overly sugary smile that seemed far too wide to be genuine. The smile that Newt's grandmother offered him was so unlike the frown she had worn only moments before that Newt was momentarily stunned.

Her mouth smiled but her eyes stabbed toward him without emotion. He could not decide which he disliked and distrusted most: his grandmother's scowl or her too-sweet smile.

As he looked at the woman's brittle yet razor-sharp smile, Newt recalled his mother's warning about her.

"Be careful what you say and do while you're at your grandmother's house," Newt remembered his mother saying. "Don't act too familial around her. Don't call her 'grandmother'. Be formal."

Remembering his mother's advice, Newt bowed to the woman and said, "good evening, Ms. Umbridge".

_**Disclaimer: I own Newt Phaeton and his family (except, of course, Deloris Umbridge). All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


	16. An Early Christmas Present

**An Early Christmas Present**

Newt sat meekly near his grandmother at one end of her enormous dining room table. On the other side of the table (separated from them by nearly ten feet of polished black wood) sat a tall, handsome wizard with long silver-blond hair and a haughty, mask-like expression on his face.

Ms. Umbridge and her guest chatted pleasantly between themselves about politics and economics (and other topics that Newt had no interest in) while Newt sipped tea (it tasted too bitter to him, but he didn't dare complain about it) and nibbled a pastry, trying to keep out of their way. Slappy the house elf stood rigidly by her mistress' shoulder, silently staring at one pink, plate-covered wall. Between each dainty sip of tea, Ms. Umbridge sat her steaming hot teacup in the middle of the pink doily on the top of the house elf's flat head.

Newt remembered his grandmother's reaction when he had asked her about Slappy (specifically, what type of creature Slappy was).

"_Haven't you ever seen a house elf before, child?" Ms. Umbridge asked Newt incredulously. "Good Lord, child. It's almost like you've been raised by muggles."_

_The woman's voice was high-pitched and sugary. Her tone had been light and cheery (and slightly mocking), but now it turned serious._

"_Now listen, boy," she said to him, her smile having disappeared altogether. "I don't want you asking silly questions like that while Mr. Malfoy is here. Lucious Malfoy did me a favor by getting your name put on the roll at Hogwarts, and now he wants to meet you and make sure he didn't make a mistake. So if he asked you, you're a talented wizard. Understand that?"_

_Newt nodded his understanding._

"_Good," Ms. Umbridge said. "Now stay out of the way when Mr. Malfoy gets here and don't speak unless you're spoken to."_

"Shockingly incompetent," Ms. Umbridge was saying, apparently agreeing with something that the Malfoy man had said. "I'm still amazed that Dumbledore let that oaf Hagrid teach classes."

Apparently, the conversation had turned from work to school without Newt noticing it.

"I do hope little Draco will be alright," she said in a squeaky, sympathy-filled voice.

"Oh, he'll be fine," the Malfoy man replied in an imperious voice as he waved a dismissive hand. "And I'm far from through with that idiot, Hagrid," he continued. "Speaking of Hogwarts, how is little Ophid doing this year?"

"Excellent," replied Newt's grandmother. "His mother tells me he excels at transfigurations. I have to confess that I'm personally quite impressed with him."

"I don't suppose you've met Ophid yet have you Mr. Phaeton," the Malfoy man said, turning to Newt.

"No sir," Newt lied as he half-choked on a piece of pastry.

"Too bad," the man said. "He really is gifted. And a Slytherin too, you know. How about you, Newt? Are you doing well at Hogwarts?"

"Yes sir," Newt answered truthfully. "I've gotten good marks so far."

"Do you have any special talents?" the Malfoy man inquired. "Do you excel in any particular area?"

"I'm good with fire spells," Newt replied.

"Really? That's interesting. Manipulating fire can be a useful skill. What sort of fire spells have you been able to perform?"

Newt said the first thing that came to his mind.

"Well, I set a school on fire before I even got my wand."

"A school?" the Malfoy man asked in an arrogant drawl.

"A muggle school," Newt elaborated.

Lucious Malfoy burst out laughing. Newt's grandmother quickly joined him. Newt, not understanding what was so funny, simply sat there staring at them.

"A muggle school," the Malfoy man chuckled. "Oh that's entertaining. I wish I could have seen it." He continued laughing. "Little better than house elves, those muggles."

Slappy, who had been forgotten by everyone in the room until that moment, cringed at Lucious Malfoy's words. Ms. Umbridge's teacup tumbled off of the elf's head and shattered on the pink-carpeted floor. The room suddenly became very quiet.

"Oh. Oh," the little elf cried as she tugged on her drooping ears and her bottom lip. "Slappy is sorry mistress. Slappy is sorry."

Then, without warning, Slappy hopped into the rut in the carpet and ran full-tilt towards the room's one unadorned wall, her bare feet kicking up dust and sprigs of pile carpet as she went. She hit the wall head-first (Newt heard a resounding "crack" as the little elf's face connected with the stucco) and bounced back onto the floor. The ceramic plates on the other three walls rocked and swayed from the impact. Slappy shook her head to clear it, then looked up at her mistress with pleading, tear-filled eyes.

"I think you need to get a better running start and try again," Ms. Umbridge told her coldly.

Sobbing, the little elf got up dutifully and trotted all the way to the far side of the room. Then she settled into a sprinter's crouch at the far end of the rut in the carpet and ran (as fast as was possible), once again, toward the bare pink wall. The "crack" that her head made as it hit the wall a second time echoed through the room. The kitten-filled plates on the other walls swung even more fiercely. Slappy bounced back from the wall and fell heavily to the floor, apparently unconscious. Both Mr. Malfoy and Ms. Umbridge were cackling with laughter. Newt felt sick.

"It's so entertaining when they punish themselves," the Malfoy man said in between bursts of laughter.

Ms. Umbridge was cackling too hard to speak, so she nodded her agreement.

Newt had to restrain himself from going to help the little creature. He had to restrain himself from screaming at his grandmother and the Malfoy man. How could anyone be so recklessly cruel?

He wasn't sure he had realized it before, but Newt certainly knew it now: they were simply evil.

A few minutes later, Slappy regained consciousness and immediately began scrubbing at the tea-colored stain on the gaudy pink carpet. Once she finished that task, she fetched her mistress another steaming hot cup of tea and resumed her rigid stance at Ms. Umbridge's side. She acted as if nothing had happened.

By that time, Ms. Umbridge and the Malfoy man had resumed their conversation and had moved on to other topics; neither of them spoke to Newt for the rest of the meal.

As he was preparing to leave, the Malfoy man asked Newt to accompany him to the fireplace.

"I heard about your talent with fire spells from a few of your teachers," the Malfoy man said without preamble as they approached Ms. Umbridge's giant, man-sized fireplace.

The Malfoy man picked up a large leather-bound book from the hearth and handed it to the boy.

"So I thought I would bring you this," the Malfoy man continued. "Consider it an early Christmas present," he said.

Newt looked at the ancient tome in his hands. The cracked leather cover was so battered and worn that he could not read its inscription.

"That book," said the Malfoy man, "contains every fire spell ever known. Naturally, a few of the spells it describes are dark in nature. Many of the dark arts are concerned with manipulating fire, after all," the Malfoy man said with a nonchalant drawl.

Newt got the clear impression that the man was downplaying the dark arts. It seemed like the Malfoy man was trying, in a round about way, to recruit him for something, though he had no idea what that something could be.

"Seeing that you're not supposed to learn any of the dark arts," the Malfoy man continued, "it would be best if you didn't tell anyone that you got that book from me."

His eyes turned steely for a moment.

Newt nodded his understanding. He didn't want anything to do with this man, but he was intensely interested in the ancient book he now held in his hands. It felt like a treasure of forbidden knowledge.

"Good," said the Malfoy man in a comforting tone. "I sense that I can expect great things from you in the future. I'll be keeping my eye on you."

Mr. Malfoy then stepped quickly into the firplace, was briefly engulfed in emerald flames, and was gone.

_**Disclaimer: I own Newt Phaeton and his family (except, of course, Deloris Umbridge). All other characters and locations are owned by J. K. Rowling.**_


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